


Coil

by outlier



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Sigils, Tattoos, kalex week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-07-27 22:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16228610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlier/pseuds/outlier
Summary: Winn brings the temporary tattoos as party favors, but Kara finds she likes the way her sigil looks on Alex's skin.





	Coil

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kalex Week 2018. Prompt: Jealousy / Possessiveness
> 
> The differences in the sigils are derived from this [still](https://imgix.bustle.com/rehost/2016/10/10/5923fa73-0088-4ac2-88ca-1aad86d4953d.jpg?w=970&h=582&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70)

Winn had gotten them as a joke, or so he claimed. Kara couldn’t be completely sure, because close inspection revealed a tiny betrayal. She wasn’t going to call him on it, though, because she’d heard the way his heart started to race whenever Clark was in sight. If he wanted to pass off the custom-ordered temporary tattoos of the Superman sigil as Supergirl-themed party favors, she’d let him. It was probably buyer’s remorse anyway, because she doubted even Winn could come up with uses for 750 of the little stamps.

“Ugh,” Alex said, peeling away the square of plastic backing to reveal Clark’s sigil on the underside of her forearm, “it’s not even yours. Honestly. Didn’t he make your uniform?”

Her vindication was complete. “Exactly!”

The differences were both small and large but impossible to miss. The cap to the bottom curve of the sigil of the House of El was rounded on Clark’s uniform and squared off on hers. She could write it off as a mistaken belief that that the former was artistic license, because it wasn’t as if Winn was fluent in written Kryptonian. More egregious, Clark’s sigil was red set against a yellow background to her red lined with yellow and set against blue, but she wasn’t going to get hung up on it. She wasn’t.

“How long do these last, anyway?” Alex asked, rubbing her thumb over the now set tattoo.

Kara shrugged. “Just a few days.”

“We should get your sigil trademarked.” Alex frowned down at the mark, the mix of red, yellow, and a splash of blue vibrant against her skin. “That way doofuses who can’t even tell the difference will have to pay extra.”

She laughed and agreed – not seriously, but with an amused, exasperated expression – and deliberately didn’t notice the way it made her feel warm inside to see even this bastardized version of her sigil on Alex’s skin.

\------

“Better.” Alex looked smug as Winn guiltily proffered a new, revised set of temporary tattoos, red lined with yellow against a blue background, with the end cap on the bottom curve squared off.

“It has come to my attention that the others were defective,” he said, spilling a handful onto the table. They scattered, skidding across the top of the box of Pictionary and tumbling over the side to land in a veritable heap of tiny, plastic squares. “It was a tragic mistake, now rectified, and I apologize sincerely.”

“Team Girl of Steel,” James said, already pulling up his sleeve to reveal his bicep. “Give me a couple more of those.”

Kara blushed and rolled her eyes, but she helped him shape nine of them into a three by three box and held the wet washcloth against him for the proscribed 90 seconds. The effect was probably more crooked than intended and definitely provided an excuse for a shameless amount of flexing, but she couldn’t help feeling a little proud.

A family lost and a family found, and she was absolutely not going to tear up over a cheap party prop.

She found Alex on the couch and curled up beside her, taking refuge against the solid support of her shoulder.

“It’s a far superior look,” Alex said, admiring Kara’s sigil on the inside of her forearm. She rolled her arm to the left and to the right, taking it in from all angles.

Kara watched as muscles flexed. The skin there was pale, even for Alex, and the blue so incredibly vibrant in comparison. It was the blue of the ocean, an Earth blue. Not quite the blue of the House of El, which couldn’t be captured in something as impermanent as made-to-order, party favor tattoos.

For a moment, her mind drifted. She wondered what Alex would have looked like in the clothing they wore on Krypton, each garment etched with the sigil of her House. A long, dark blue dress like her mother always wore, perhaps. Conservative, maybe, by Earth standards, but all Kara could remember was looking at her mother in her long-sleeved dresses, with their high necklines and hemlines that nearly brushed the ground, and seeing strength.

“Back home,” she said, knowing Alex would know which home she meant, “the only people who could wear this were family.”

She drew her fingertips over the mark on Alex’s arm, the tattoo’s ink barely sticky now that it had dried. Alex shivered, as if the touch was ticklish, and her hand curled into a loose fist.

Kara thought about Alex, head held high and shoulders thrown back, strong and beautiful in a long, Kryptonian dress. “It looks good on you.”

She stole an ample handful of the tattoos, tucking them away in her purse before anyone could notice.

\------

Alex was gay, and Kara had taken up so much room for so long that neither of them had possessed the spare bandwidth to notice. Gay in an official capacity for a week and already her heart was broken, and the only thing Kara could do was hold her close and let her cry.

“There’s someone out there who will walk with you, Alex,” she said, Alex’s head tucked under her chin and her strong shoulders feeling unusually fragile as Kara wrapped her up tightly. “Someone worthy of sharing Rao’s light with you. You’ll find her. I know you will. I’ll help. We’ll find her together.”

But Kara had horrible taste, at least when it came to finding Alex a girlfriend. “Kara, she thought the moon actually emitted light of its own,” she said after the first date Kara set her up with, a photographer from the CatCo pool. After the second, with one of the employees from Noonan’s that Kara was convinced had a crush on Alex, “Kara, she thinks all aliens should have to register so we can start shipping them back to where they came from.”

The latter was concerning and actually really disappointing, because Kara had thought of Alex’s potential new girlfriend as a friend.

“It’s an easy way to weed out the weirdos,” Kara said when she presented Alex with the bright blue tee with the sigil of the House of El spread wide across the front. “If they don’t like Supergirl, they clearly can’t be trusted.”

Alex rolled her eyes but tried it on. “Kara, this is way too tight!”

It wasn’t, Kara pointed out. She argued that Alex tended to wear her clothes baggy, but if she was really looking to attract attention, she’d take Kara’s word for it. The shirt looked good on her.

“Really good,” she stressed, hands cupping Alex’s biceps. “In fact, I should get you more of them.”

Alex swayed forward and Kara folded her hold into a hug.

“I can’t have a wardrobe that consists only of Supergirl tee-shirts,” Alex mumbled into her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure that’s how you _don’t_ get dates.”

Kara’s yelp was indignant. “You take that back!”

“I know what I said and I stand by it.” Alex butted her head against Kara’s shoulder, gently so as to avoid injuring herself. “That doesn’t mean I’m not your biggest fan, though.”

Kara held her tight for long enough to blink away the way her eyes grew a little damp.

\------

Kara heard Alex’s breathing change a second before she stirred and laid her marker to the side.

“Kara?”

“Hey.” Kara leaned over her, blocking out most of the already weak light. “Don’t try to get up. You took a hard hit when that Braalian tried to throw a car at me.”

Despite Kara’s admonition, Alex tried to struggle up on her elbows. A gentle hand on her shoulder kept her where she was. “Someone tried to throw a car at you?”

“They did.” She smoothed the hair out of Alex’s face and ghosted her fingers over the dark bruise that had formed along her jaw. “It clipped you. I’m sorry.”

Alex sounded confused. “Did I try to catch a car?”

“No, but I wouldn’t put it past you.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to Alex’s forehead, breathing in the comforting scent of her. “Your arm’s broken, and you have a few new scars. You had some internal bleeding. They had to do surgery, but they say everything’s fine now.”

“It must have been a big car.”

Kara huffed out a laugh. “I have it on good authority that a car of any size is too big of a car if thrown at a human.”

Alex nodded far too seriously, as if trying to process the statement. “But you’re okay, right?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.” She kissed Alex again, this time on her unbruised cheek. “You kept me safe.”

“That’s good.” Alex seemed relieved. “Don’t tell Mom, okay? She’ll worry.”

There was no sense in telling Alex that Eliza was already on her way, not when she was drifting off to sleep. Instead, she retrieved her marker and went back to work, inking the red lines of her crest against the rough texture of Alex’s cast.

By the time Alex was ready to leave the hospital, Kara had lovingly painted the front of her cast red, yellow, and blue. She filled in the rest over hours spent on the couch, trying to keep Alex entertained and occasionally reminding herself that Alex wasn’t grumpy at _her_. She was grumpy about the situation in general, going stir-crazy and possessed of too much time to indulge her paranoia that the DEO might fall apart in her absence.

“What are you writing?” Alex asked. Her arm was on a pillow on Kara’s lap, palm up. She’d taken to letting Kara work without asking too many questions, resigned to the fact that she’d been made into a personal art project.

“Hmm?”

“There,” Alex said, gesturing vaguely with her chin. “What does that say?”

“Maybe if you hadn’t given up on learning Kryptonian, you’d be able to read it yourself.”

Alex groaned and twisted to face her, squinting down at the marks Kara had made. “I can still understand a lot,” she grumbled. “And I haven’t forgotten everything. That stands for the individual. For I.”

She pointed at the long dash with the slightly offset dot at the end, and Kara felt her throat catch. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t answer. It wasn’t as if they didn’t say it. In fact, they traded _I love you’s_ all the time, but it felt a little weird to admit to doodling it on Alex’s arm.

Kara screwed her face up as if she was a linguist trying to puzzle out a tricky translation. “It says, _For a good time call…_ ”

She took her whack with a pillow with grace.

\------

She wasn’t especially pleased to see Alex out in the field, even if she was only being allowed out after all of the danger has passed. She was even less pleased to see Maggie Sawyer there, and to hear the way Alex’s heart started to beat a little faster as she approached.

“Danvers,” Maggie said, her voice as clear as a bell in Kara’s ears despite all of the ambient noise. “It’s good to see you. I heard you’d been injured.”

She watched as Alex nodded and self-consciously traced her hand over the cast on her opposite arm. “I’ll be back on active duty soon.”

“I’m sure you will.” Maggie’s eyes flicked down to the cast and then over Alex’s shoulder to where Kara was standing. An odd expression passed over her face. Regret, maybe. “I’m glad to see you landed on your feet after everything.”

Alex turned to follow Maggie’s line of sight and Kara straightened, uncrossing her arms and trying to look as not angry as possible. Not that Alex should be mad at her for being mad. She was well within her rights. It was some kind of code, even if the look on Alex’s face didn’t seem like she would be supportive of that reading.

“Yeah, it’s taken longer than I would have liked, but I get the cast off in a couple of weeks.”

Maggie blinked slowly. She looked between Alex and Kara, wide-eyed, and Kara figured out just how far awry things had gone just as she opened her mouth to speak. “I can see why you’d be looking forward to that.”

“Detective Sawyer,” she said, appearing at Alex’s elbow in the blink of an eye.

“Supergirl.”

She saw Alex tense out of the corner of her eye, clearly aware of the undercurrent of tension that had developed but not quiet clued in to the why. She was about to ask – Kara could see it in her eyes – when someone called her name, and Kara took advantage of the distraction to subtly shake her head at Maggie, a warning not to say anything else lest Alex catch on.

Maggie’s eyes widened in surprise. She dropped her chin and tilted her head to the side in the classic, wordless expression of ‘ _really?_ ’

‘ _Can we please just not, right now?_ ’ said Kara’s own head tilt, raised eyebrows, and not-so-subtle cut of the eyes in Alex’s direction.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, distracted as she re-entered the conversation. “I need to go see what this is about.”

Kara desperately wanted to trail after her, but Maggie’s hand on her arm kept her where she was.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Maggie spun and pointed a finger at Kara’s chest. “Are you telling me that she’s completely unaware of the fact that you’ve literally written your name all over her?”

She decided to try for ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t even try that with me.”

Kara sighed. “Don’t tell her, okay?”

“I won’t, but you should.”

“Should what? I don't even know what I'd tell her.”

Maggie looked at her askance. “If you don’t figure it out, someone else will. They’ll do more than just pretend they don’t know what they want from her, Supergirl, and you’ll be too late.”

She didn't want to understand - the implications were daunting - but the words echoed ominously in her head, chasing round and round, too straightforward to be anything other than true.

\------

“Kara, can you focus? I need your help.”

She looked at the two dresses laid out on Alex’s bed – one red and one black – and considered what might happen if she happened to set them on fire.

It was the first time Alex had made it to a third date with anyone, and she wanted Kara’s opinion. A third date. Everyone knew what happened on a third date.

“Neither,” she said, riffling through Alex’s closet with a little more force than was technically warranted given the structural vulnerabilities of the design. She pulled a dress from the back, accidentally breaking off the rack’s hook. “This one.”

She held the dress out to Alex, who looked at it with apathy. “No, not the blue one. I wore that to the undercover thing with Maggie. It’s… ugh. I can’t wear that on a date. It’s cursed now.”

“Blue is your favorite color.”

“Well, yes,” Alex allowed, “but it _looks_ better on you.”

“You wanted my opinion? That’s my opinion.”

“What is wrong with you tonight?” Alex narrowed her eyes at her, searching. “Is it work? Did Snapper say something?”

Kara forced down her frustration. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m sorry. You’ll look beautiful no matter what you wear.” She rubbed at her forehead and surveyed the dresses again. “How well are you hoping this date will go?”

“I mean, well?” Alex shrugged. “I wouldn’t be going out with her again if I wanted things to go poorly.”

“But are we talking _goodnight kiss at the door_ well or _how do you like your eggs for breakfast_ well?”

Alex looked scandalized.

“It’s a valid question! If you want a goodnight kiss, you wear the black. If you want to be making her breakfast in the morning, you wear the red.”

She was more relieved than she could say when Alex picked the black.

\------

Alex wore long sleeves for a month after her cast was removed.

“Come on,” Kara said, nudging Alex’s thigh with her foot. “No one’s going to see it anyway, and I have like fifty of these. We can try different patterns.”

“Why do you have so many anyway?” Alex asked, picking a temporary tattoo off of the stack Kara had filched from Winn.

“They were party favors. He was giving them away.”

She hadn’t heard anything about third date girl in a while and didn’t think she would, not with the way Alex gave a long-suffering sigh and rolled up her sleeve. As Kara worked methodically, creating a band around Alex’s forearm just below her elbow, she slowly but surely worked the conversation around to, “Have you ever thought about getting a real one?”

Alex, who had been lulled into a half-sleep by the soft touches and muted background noise of the tv show they weren’t watching, rolled her head to the side so she was looking at Kara. “A real tattoo?”

She made a soft noise of encouragement and slipped the last square of plastic free to reveal her masterpiece.

“I almost did once. In college,” she said, shivering when Kara blew on the last of the tattoos she’d so carefully placed.

“You never told me that.”

“It would have been awful.” Alex laughed lazily and shifted as Kara flowed up into her, working her way into the space beside Alex so that she was wrapped around her side. “I would have ended up with some Japanese symbol for something as a tramp stamp, but I was too drunk and they wouldn’t do it.”

“And you never thought about it again?”

Alex turned into her, expression curious. “Why the sudden interest?”

 “Some of them are really pretty.” She shrugged. “And I guess it makes me think of Krypton. Not the tattooing part, but the way it’s always with you. We always had our House’s sigil on our clothing. The first time I ever wore anything that didn’t have it was here, on Earth.”

“I bet we could find some way to do that.” Alex’s expression softened. “I could talk to Winn.”

She pressed her face into Alex’s shoulder for a moment so that she could collect her thoughts away from the way Alex’s eyes were so warm and dark and loving. “It wasn’t just me. Everyone could look at a member of my House and know we were family.”

Alex looked down at her arm, and at the tiny shields circling it. “Is that what this is all about?”

“I like to see you wearing my sigil.” She screwed up her courage and looked for the words to explain something she wasn’t quite sure she would ever be ready to explain but knew she had to if there was ever going to be a chance for more. “Sometimes I wish I could have gotten to know you on Krypton. I imagine what you would have looked like in the formal robes of the Science Guild or the armor of the Warrior Guild. I think, if I had known you there, I would have asked your permission to court you.”

Alex froze against her.

“And if you’d said yes, then one day we could have joined. I could have welcomed you into my House. You would have worn my sigil every day, or maybe we would have made a new one.”

“ _Kara_.”

She winced and regretted everything. Immediately. “But you were right. Who would want a closet full of Supergirl tee shirts, much less all of this.”

Alex’s hand found her thigh when she shifted to move away. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make a joke of this.”

“Don’t make a joke of what? They’re just daydreams. Fantasies.”

“Kara, are you… Is this… Do you have romantic feelings for me?”

She burned with embarrassment and futility.

“ _Oh_ ,” Alex said softly.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled away, and didn’t let Alex stop her. “Forget I said anything. It’s silly, and I’m sorry. We’ll forget this ever happened.”

She ignored the way Alex called after her, flying until she couldn’t hear the sound of her voice anymore.

\------

The problem with hiding away was that Alex knew where she lived. She ignored the agitated knocking, but she couldn’t really ignore the threats.

“I have a key. Either you open the door or I do.”

She’d been planning an evening of crushing depression, and frankly, it was rude of Alex to interrupt.

Alex opened the door.

“I know we need to talk and we will—” she called out, not turning around because she wasn’t yet at the stage where she thought she could look at Alex without crying— “but do you think we could do it later?”

“Kara, look at me.”

“I need a few more days, okay?”

“Kara.” From the way Alex said her name, it didn’t sound like she was all that interested in indulging Kara’s desire to just not do this, please. “I need you to look at me.”

So she did. And Alex was fidgeting and unsure and already blushing, but she was wearing the shirt Kara had given her, and somewhere she’d found a pair of pajama pants with SUPERGIRL written down the leg in big, blocky letters, and the sigil beside it was wrong, but that wasn’t Alex’s fault. Clark’s sigil had always driven the merchandising, and it looked like Alex had tried to color in the yellow background so it’d be blue with predictably green results.

Kara forgot to breathe.

“I did a lot of thinking,” Alex said, her voice tremulous. “If you asked if you could court me, I would say yes. I don’t know what it would mean or how it would go, but I’d like to give it a chance.”

Her breathing troubles didn’t improve.

“Unless that’s not really what you wanted.”

She closed the distance between them, until she was close enough to reach out and run her fingers over the top edge of the shield stretched across Alex’s chest.

“It was. It is.” She swallowed hard. “Do I have your permission to court you, Alex Danvers?”

The blush stretching across Alex’s cheekbones deepened. “Yes,” she said, and bit nervously at her lower lip. “You do.”

\------

On their third date, Alex wore the black dress. On their seventh, she wore the red.

\------

She was abuzz with nervous energy. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” The look on Alex’s face was painfully fond. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“No! I mean, no. Of course not. It’s a big step, though, and I don’t want you to feel like I pressured you into it.”

“You didn’t. We’ve been talking about this for months. We’ve had this appointment for weeks.” She held out her arms. “Come here.”

If she’d needed even more proof that Alex actually meant it, it could be found in the way she let Kara kiss her, even though there was a stranger in the room with them.

Alex took in a deep breath and shrugged out of her shirt. “I’m ready.”

“You know,” the tattoo artist said as she pressed the stencil of Kara’s sigil against Alex’s ribs, “your girlfriend kind of even looks like Supergirl.”

Kara reached out to take Alex’s hand, fingers twining together. “Yeah, I get that sometimes,” she said, and grinned as Alex rolled her eyes and pulled her in close.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumbl](http://outlyingoutlier.tumblr.com/)


End file.
